The Los Angeles Dodgers will be sending six players to the MLB All-Star Game in Texas next week. This is old hat for LA, a team built around stars that is chugging through another relatively easy regular season. They are always sending a minibus full of guys to the All-Star Game. They’ve sent at least five players every year since 2019, and at least four in seven of the last 10 years. The Dodgers are good.
This week, however, they will play in Philadelphia. The three-game set at Citizens Bank Park will begin Tuesday night, and eyes across baseball will be watching as the National League’s top two teams square off. The results will fuel analysis, trade rumors and trash talk, disregarding just about every game each team has played previously this season.
What those games have shown, though, is that the Phillies (58-32) are better than the Dodgers (55-36), record-wise. They are also better than the Dodgers All-Star-wise, because while the Dodgers are sending six players again, the Phillies are sending seven — a franchise record and the most of any team this year.
The NL’s starting infield (selected by fan vote) will feature Bryce Harper (should he return from injury), Alec Bohm and Trea Turner, and the NL pitching staff (selected by MLB player vote) will have Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suarez, Matt Strahm, and Jeff Hoffman. Wheeler may not pitch, as he’s scheduled to make a start two days before the All-Star Game, so he likely won’t become more familiar to the media — FOX Sports spelled his name wrong when they announced the pitching staff.
4 first-timers
What’s immediately cool about this particular group of All-Stars is that four of the seven are making the team for the first time. Bohm’s big league accolades to this point include being the runner-up for the 2020 NL Rookie of the Year award, and leading the league in sac flies (2022) and in grounding into double plays (2023). Strahm and Hoffman are both seasoned hurlers who escaped from struggling teams and came into their own in their early thirties, after the Phillies had determined them worthy of signing. And Suarez, when asked about his All-Star chances after a recent rough outing against the Braves after a dominant start to the year, shook his head sadly.
But these are four huge success stories, both for the players personally and for the Phillies organization. This was not a team where players came to become All-Stars. It was a place where All-Stars were traded for a handful of minor leaguers who wouldn’t work out. Like today’s Rockies, who are trying to frame “fan favorite” Jake Cave as a trade chip because he has seven hits in five July starts and finally got the ball over the fence the other day (in Denver, no less, where it’s supposed to be even easier to do that).
That used to be the Phillies — literally, in Cave’s case, since he played for them last year — but also historically. The Phillies squeezed all the innings they could out of Terry Mulholland, then hosted the All-Star Game in 1996 and traded him to Seattle for Desi Relaford two weeks later.
All-Stars everywhere
Now, the Phillies are seeing All-Stars everywhere. There will be haters, of course. They’ll say things like, “Francisco Lindor should be starting over Trea Turner at shortstop,” and “Seriously, Lindor has more hits, home runs, RBI and stolen bases than Turner. What is happening?!?”
These people are Mets fans, and can generally be silenced by securely fastening the manhole cover back on the sewer drain. But their point, while ignorable, has merit.
What’s happening is:
- Turner has played in 30 fewer games than Lindor due to injury, so his slash line is more robust (.335/.381/.498) than Lindor’s (.250/.316/.447), thanks in part to a smaller sample size.
- Lindor is better defensively.
- Much, much more importantly, more Phillies fans voted for Turner than Mets fans voted for Lindor.
What’s perfect about the current All-Star selection system is that it really opens the door for the unhinged and chronically online to make their mark on baseball, though, thankfully, they can’t repeatedly click “submit ballot” like back in the old internet days.
And yet, allowing fans to vote is an instant advantage.Turner being named the starting shortstop for the NL All-Star team isn’t because he is literally the best shortstop in the National League. It’s because the Phillies are the best team in the NL and Turner is their shortstop. People are excited about the Phillies. Well, Phillies fans. Phillies fans are excited about the Phillies. And when Phillies fans get excited about the Phillies, they find outlets for their emotions.
Yelling at sports radio is one. Starting a podcast is another. There’s the old standard of weaponizing social media to taunt rival fans or threatening to decapitate and eat the Braves’ mascot. By that standard, All-Star voting is probably the most wholesome way to learn that this city is frantic about its Phillies again, and you see it when every Phillies player, whether he is having an All-Star season or not, is getting votes to appear in the All-Star game.
A rising tide lifts all boats
Even with most Phillies getting significant numbers of votes this year, you’ll be shocked to learn that not every Phillies player got in. Bryce Harper wakes up an All-Star every morning, and Alec Bohm is having the best season of his career. They would have gotten votes from non-Phillies supporters and fans of great hair regardless. Turner is an established star having a fantastic year who missed a month with an injury. But according to voting updates before the selections were finalized, there were Phillies in the mix for just about every position for a while, from free-swinging-and-missing Nick Castellanos to can’t-hit-lefties Brandon Marsh to at-one-point-demoted-to-the-minors Johan Rojas.
The reason that you saw such a great turnout for Phillies players, from the struggling to the elite, is because the Phillies are back. They’ve made the postseason the last two years, they are an established postseason contender, and the fans reflect that in their voting for, say, Kyle Schwarber over Shohei Ohtani.
As the Phillies send a record number of league-best players to Texas for the Midsummer Classic, we’ll obviously enjoy it. We’ll enjoy it even if Wheeler and Harper don’t play. We’ll enjoy seeing how Marsh finds a way to be around and how Bohm fares in the Home Run Derby. But beyond all of that is the general enjoyment of this summer, this season, and this team, because the All-Star Game is another reflection of how good they are — and how beloved they’ve become.
Just not to Mets fans.
